


And My Bones Are Calling Out Your Name

by evieoh



Series: All That I Want [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Post 3x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 01:38:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14094207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evieoh/pseuds/evieoh
Summary: She feels frozen now, numb. Her grief is a like a lump in her throat that she can't speak past, but she can't acknowledge it either. To say how much she feels like a part of her has been ripped open would be a betrayal to those she loves.[post 3x10. Skye deals with Ward's death]





	And My Bones Are Calling Out Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all, my previous account was hacked and all my fics deleted, so I am reuploading them all now. This one was originally posted in December 2015.

There is a part of her that wishes she had never opened that door, never found Koenig's body. That she had never found out the truth. That maybe they really could have gone somewhere and pretended that the world outside didn't exist. She knows all the reasons it never could have worked, but still... It is a wish that stays, lingers in that deep, hidden part of her that holds onto kisses before facing down death and the smile that only she ever seemed to draw from him.

 

She feels frozen now, numb. Her grief is a like a lump in her throat that she can't speak past, but she can't acknowledge it either. To say how much she feels like a part of her has been ripped open would be a betrayal to those she loves.

 

So she keeps quiet, keeps to herself. Keeps going with her life. She learns to contain, compartmentalize, to push it away. She smiles, she laughs, she trains the new recruits and goes on missions. She goes through the motions of her life. Maybe she is a little more distant, perhaps there is a newer brittle edge to her now (just another layer of the girl she used to be scraped away by the realities of her world now), but it's only noticeable if you really look hard. (No-one does.)

 

Her grief is private, but it’s always there. There is an empty space at the edge of her consciousness, a constant awareness of the lack of him in the world. It becomes almost a physical presence in her life, like a heavy shadow that she pulls behind her through her day. She can feel the cold fingers dragging at the edge of her mind, ready to turn a happy moment sour. It’s there; always waiting for that moment of weakness, waiting for those sleepless hours in the middle of the night, running her ragged and dragging her down.

 

She feels like she's choking on it sometimes. Quiet agony that creeps up on her when she is alone in the dark, wide awake and unable to keep herself from going down a thousand different paths of 'what if?'

 

Maybe somewhere, in some parallel universe, there is a Skye and a Grant who managed to make it work. Maybe there is some place where they kissed earlier, told the truth earlier, were able to have just a little more time, a little more honesty and a little less broken trust.

 

Is there a world where he knocked on  _her_  door that night in Dublin? One where they stayed up all night sitting side by side, his hand in hers? Where he told her all about his childhood and confessed those sins that haunt him? Where she would hold his face and kiss him sweetly, and he would look at her just like he did in Providence? ( _Like she was the first thing he had ever seen in color, like she was something revered_.)

 

Or maybe he didn't come that night in Dublin, but maybe after she was shot, before everything went so wrong. Maybe after nearly losing her, maybe after realizing how much more she meant than he knew, maybe he would tell her. Tell her everything, about Garrett, about Hydra, about his feelings for her.

 

Maybe there is a world where he chose her instead.

 

Or what if they just met one night at a bar? (What if they were the kind of people who met in bars?) What if he was able to shake off _Grant Ward, Agent of SHIELD_  for a night and just be Grant? What if she could see something there that made her drop her defenses, just for one night, just for a moment? Just a night of the two of them and no past: no families who abandoned you or beat you, no hidden loyalties, no bodies waiting to be found. What could have come from that? Would they have left with nothing but a pleasant memory of salt sweat skin on the tongue and an ache of something that might have been something more? Or would one night like that have been enough to change everything? To put them on another path?

 

She agonizes over choices so far gone they don’t matter anymore, as she lays in the dark with the ghost of him beside her ( _she never got to sleep beside him_.) She knows it's pointless, he was gone so long before he was actually gone. Their moment of possibility was over before she fully understood what she might have had. But every night she's back here, unable to sleep, unable to let him go, obsessed with finding the moment that everything could have been changed; as if the wanting could make it so. As though that has ever gotten her anything in life before. It's a scab she can't stop picking at, but she can't let it heal. If she stops, if she really lets him go, then he's really gone. And that idea is more than she can bear.

 

She never saw his body. Coulson and Fitz were vague on the details; on the how and the circumstance that led to him being left behind, but she can guess what happened. (She can see the path that led to this.) But without a body there is some small flicker in her, a small voice that says  _‘maybe’_. That refusal to believe that he could truly be gone from the world. There is no way he won’t always there: her enemy, her ally, the man who trained her, who betrayed her. The man whose love for her remained a constant in her life, even when everything else changed so much. (It is only in retrospect that she can truly appreciate that,  _like so much about him._ )

 

So even as she lays there in the darkness, tracing every choice and action and the butterfly effect that could have been, she still can't let go of that tiny spark of belief that he is out there still. That he will reappear one day, cocky grin and swagger and all. ( _That look in his eyes like she is his sun._ )

 

And then he does. And it is suddenly so much worse.

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first fic I'd written in over 8 years. Huge thanks to Alkeni and stargazerdaisy for beta reading and the confidence boost.
> 
> (Title from All I Want by Dawn Golden)


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